Service assurance

With more than one-third of IT Professionals citing ‘moving faster’ as their top goal for 2018, and an overwhelming 99% of IT and business decision makers noticing an increasing pace of change in today’s connected world, it’s clear that speed has become intrinsically linked to business success, writes Michael Segal, the AVP of strategy at NETSCOUT. For companies looking to compete in the digital economy, this pace of transformation is being driven by their customers and requires speedy software releases, agility through cloud services, and automation.

In a recent survey, 89% of UK businesses said they would consider moving to wireless connectivity because they all – that’s 100% of respondents – have had their business performance negatively impacted during the last two years. VanillaPlus managing editor George Malim reports from an industry roundtable to discuss the findings and the prospects for fixed wireless access in the era of virtualisation and 5G

The digital business transformation being experienced by operators and their enterprise customers also provides fertile ground for new services from smart communications service providers (CSPs). But first, explains Dima Alkin, TEOCO’s vice president of Service Assurance Solutions, CSPs need to get more specific about their enterprise support services.

With the ever-increasing demand for cloud computing, mobility and video streaming, there is a growing burden being placed on our global networks, writes Loudon Blair, a senior director in the Corporate Strategy Office at Ciena. Indeed, system overload is now an imminent possibility for many organisations due to the vast amount of traffic coming – and yet to come – from Internet of Things’ (IoT) devices, 4K and 8K video streaming and virtual reality applications. This is of course in addition to the substantial amount of over-the-top (OTT) service streaming of voice and video already commonplace in daily use.

We’ve all experienced web pages that load slowly or time out. But what’s even more annoying is a laggy or choppy VoIP call or live video stream. After decades of improved network technologies, ever-increasing bandwidth and speeds, why are we still having problems, and what should network engineers do about it? Chris Bloom, a technology evangelist at Savvius provides some answers.

It has been more than 15 years since the first IP-based networks were deployed, followed by a plethora of innovation across these networks, writes Frank Paterno, the vice president of Global Carriers at PGi in the first part of a two-part article.

We know that businesses want reliable mobile service for their staff, clients, visitors and, where necessary, the public – and the ability to deliver this everywhere, easily and cost-effectively, writes Costa Tsourkas, the head of business development at NEC UK.

Recently I was on a train from Frankfurt to Nuremburg in Germany attempting in vain to get some work done, writes Robin Kent, the director of European operations at Adax. The issue I had is that, as there was no Wi-Fi available on-board, I was having to rely on the mobile phone network to remain connected. My frustration grew as my phone constantly flitted between 4G, 3G and 2G, causing emails not to sync correctly and an increasing amount of important messages becoming stuck in my outbox, as well as troubles with web browsing. (more…)

While it’s no secret that CSPs perennially end up at the bottom of customer satisfaction reports, a survey this summer by the Institute of Customer Service report actually shows signs of significant improvement in the space. A shift in attitude and embracing new tools can help break CSPs’ poor customer service cycle, writes Mussy Kurt-Elli is CEO of QubeGB(more…)

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